Walking the silent paths of winter, I come across a dogwood, frozen into the stream, so delicately held in stasis, frosted with crystal night. I look behind and see my tracks, the lines of time that mark my passage, overlaying the silent echos of coyote and squirrel. Over the wings in flight, brushed feathers on the snow from which the ghost of flapping wind can be heard and felt. I wonder at how there are no passages that truly are unseen, they all leave their mark somewhere, somehow, a dimming sound that doesn't actually ever end, but vibrates longer and slower into the recesses of time.